Paul Desains

Quentin Paul Desains (born July 12, 1817 in Saint-Quentin , † May 3, 1885 in Paris ) was a French physicist.

career

Desains first went to school in Saint-Quentin and graduated from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. After winning the first prize in the national entrance exams ( Concours général ) in physics in 1835 , he studied at the École normal supérieure of Paris (ENS) and at the Sorbonne , with Pierre Louis Dulong and Claude Pouillet , among others . In 1839 he received his degree in mathematics and physics and became a high school teacher in Caen . Later he was a teacher at the Collège Stanislas in Paris (1841-1847) and at the Lycée Saint-Louis (1841-1844), where his brother Édouard was a teacher. At the same time he taught at the later Lycée Condorcet (then Collège royal de Bourbon or Lycée impérial Bonaparte ) from 1844 to 1853 . In 1848 he received his doctorate in Paris with a physical thesis on thermal radiation and a thesis in chemistry. In 1853 he succeeded Pouillet as professor of physics at the Faculté des Sciences in Paris. In 1868 he was one of the founders of the physics laboratory of the École des hautes études pratiques and taught there as director. This laboratory for the training of physicists was a great success, among other things Pierre Curie taught there . At times he was also an astronomer at the Paris Observatory .

Paul Desains dealt in particular with optics and thermodynamics , in particular with the verification of the Dulong-Petit law , heat of fusion and thermal radiation, and observations of geomagnetism. He showed that thermal radiation has similar properties to light waves.

During the siege of Paris in the course of the Franco-Prussian War, he and Charles d'Almeida ensured that telegraphic connections were maintained throughout the city.

In 1873 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of members since 1666: Letter D. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 6, 2019 (French).